CHEM 2420

Never before have I experienced a professor that wanted his class to fail more than this professor. Organic Chemistry in general is truly a difficult time for everybody, but taking with Chruma was honestly miserable. Lecture was the biggest waste of time-- there wasn't any larger type of structure nor goals within his lecturing style, just attempting to describe individual reactions with no connections between them. Also during the COVID semester he didn't make any of the recordings available to students which was increasingly difficult not only because of his dull lecturing style but also hes left handed and wrote out all of his notes on a document camera, so his hand was blocking the notes he was lecturing on for the majority of the lecture. Just as a comparison to another professor/teaching style-- the previous semester I took this course with a different professor (Samonina) and through her course, I truly felt that she wanted each of her students to succeed and her teaching style reflected that.
During COVID semester the grading was different (I'd assume) but each exam (including the final) was worth 20% of the entire grade and the homeworks (on an online platform that the textbook was also located on) were worth another 20%. He also did allow for test corrections on each of the midterms, which brought the average of each test up from about a 50% to a 75%. The homework assigned didn't relfect the difficulty (or even style of questions ) that were on each of the exams-- they were pre written questions on an online homework platform, a useful tool but definitely not a substitution for instructor-written material. Additionally, Chruma didn't give out any questions that reflected what his exams would look like-- the only time that we had access to the types of questions he thought were important was during the weekly mandatory discussion period. Those questions were significantly more difficult than (most) of the questions on the exams, and usually didn't reflect what we had even learned about that week in lecture.

I 110% agree with the other review and anyone you ask who took this class will also agree. The amount of stress we've endured has been detrimental for our mental health, and Chruma doesn't seek to make it any better. You have 3 finals on the same day on his final? Not his problem—it's yours. You didn't catch what he said in lecture? Too bad because it's not recorded. You want more practice? Do the discussion, but wait there's only 3 problems. However, I do have a 94 right now (not after the final oof) and the only way I was able to was by doing corrections, focusing on what he did in lecture that wasn't in the textbook (if you have time to process it instead of frantically writing everything down before his left hand covers it again), going through ALL of the practice and integrated problems in the back of the textbook, and memorizing reagents. Save yourself the tears and get into Samonina's class instead.

Completely agree with the reviews that are here so far; Chruma is by far the worst professor I have ever had and he should be avoided at all costs. This sounds extreme, but I firmly believe many of my classmates would say the exact same. His lecture style is pretty much just to write out reactions for 75 minutes, all while covering the the entire page with his hand and not explaining what he is doing. By the time I could finally see what he was writing, he would whisk the page away and move on to the next concept. As such, I never understood any of what he was trying to tell us in lecture, and ended up teaching myself organic chemistry out of the textbook, making an already challenging class nearly impossible. To make it worse, class was not recorded, which would have been such a simple way to make a difficult class more accessible during a pandemic. But Chruma is not considerate of his students, so this is not surprising. In a class where practice problems are everything, he would only assign us 15-ish very easy homework questions a week, plus 5-7 nearly impossible discussion section questions. This made it nearly impossible to understand what would be expected of us on the exam. It turned out, there was no real way to prepare for the exam; the questions would either be synthesis problems far more difficult than the discussion questions, or obscure, incredibly lengthy mechanism questions you would only have a chance of getting right if you had happened to study it in the "challenge problems" section of the book. Maybe this is just my personal opinion, but I believe a good exam assesses our understanding of the core concepts and their applications; not how many of the challenge problems we happened to try in the book. After we all failed the second exam (average was in the 50s), we begged him for more guidance on how to best prepare for the next exam; instead of being just as disturbed as we were by the low average, he was incredibly dismissive, and the average on the third exam was also in the 50s. This class was an absolutely horrible experience, and I would not wish it on any student. Please spare yourself the suffering and do everything in your power to get into Samonina's class (the spectacular professor that I took Orgo I with), because she actually cares about her students, writes fair exams, and does everything in her power to ensure your success.

This class was hard. Very hard. If you thought first semester orgo was a struggle get ready for this. Chruma is probably the smartest professor I've ever had, but that doesn't translate into the best teaching style. He's very passionate and knows a lot about orgo, especially its applications in lab, but that often leads to him telling us more than we need to know for exams. He never gives a list of exactly what we need to know for each exam, so it's always such a guessing game. You basically have to teach yourself out of the textbook, but in fairness you have to do that for all the orgo professors at UVA. Discussion problems and the Wiley mechanism questions he highlights will be your best friend. The exam averages were in the 50s all semester. I got a D on an exam and was thrilled. His grading rubric is completely out of whack and gives almost no partial credit. But, he does give test corrections for 50% points back (without having to defend the corrections like with Frantz). And at the end of the semester, he did curve our grades and gave us the opportunity for up to 6% extra credit added after the curve which was nice and unexpected. I was looking at a C+/B- the whole semester and got curved to an A. So, it will be a struggle and you won't really know what your grade will look like, but you can do it as long as you get all your points back on corrections and practice mechanisms like crazy. No matter who you choose, try to take orgo with a professor that you can have both semesters to avoid confusion and suffering down the line (coming from someone switching Samonina to Chruma). People looking for fall of 2021, take it with Frantz or Chruma if you don't think you'll be able to get Samonina in the spring. Orgo is rough no matter who you take it with, hang in there- you got it!

i have mixed feelings about chruma. his tests can be harder than the other prof's tests and he test stuff that's not in the textbook but is in lecture (which is hard to get practice questions on) and tests also account for 80% of your grade and 20% is HW which is a pretty imbalanced distribution compared to the other profs. also, at the beginning of the semester, he did not provide notes for us (but eventually did) and throughout the semester he didn't allow us to access lecture recordings. ​however, it is extremely evident that he cares about his students and their grades and being a good teacher. he gave us extra credit last minute to help our grades out and i like the little anecdotes that he shares during lecture. he's also super approachable and great at explaining concepts.

i got an a in the course and the way i survived was diversifying my effort in reading the textbook and understanding the lecture notes (because they are slightly different). basically what i would do was during a particular unit i would get a general idea of the concepts (by quickly reading the textbook and doing the practice problems it gives) and then about 4 days before the test I would start going in depth and getting a better understanding. chruma doesn't test on idiosyncracies but he definitely tests the basics at a high level so don't go crazy memorizing the particular concepts in the textbook. instead get a complete understanding of the basics and be able to apply it in difficult scenarios. the discussion section questions will help you with that - they are around the same difficulty on the test. also, for the wiley ebook (and i think the hardcopy too), there are challenge problems and integrated problems at the end of each chapter - sometimes he'll pull test questions from those so look there

He was a decent professor. He's not mean or condescending; he's actually very down to earth and shows a deep appreciation for what he teaches. NOTE: the average grades that you see are not from this semester (as of the current date); they're from the last time he taught orgo (~2012). Just try understand how he deviates from the textbook. This was his first semester teaching orgo so he was pretty lenient on material from Orgo I. I would not recommend taking him if you haven't taken him for Orgo I. A good thing to keep note of is that course forum reviews are skewed and that the course was taught online. Generally speaking people who had Hsu (like I did) or Frantz tended to do well (but again he didn't teach orgo I so he was lenient in testing that material); with most complaints coming from students with other professors. Try to go to OH if you need help. He's pretty much like all the other orgo professors in terms of grades. Good Luck!

This was definitely the hardest class I have taken at UVA but Prof. Chruma is very nice and down to earth. I definitely struggled a lot in this class, but going to office hours helped me a lot because he was able to answer whatever questions I had. However, a lot of the time I didn't even know what to ask because I was lost. It was hard to stay engaged during lecture because you could not see what was being written since Prof. Chruma is left handed, but he can't really help that. I will say that the lecture notes are more important than the book notes and while you do not get access to the recorded lecture, he did upload a copy of lecture notes after each lecture. I would study using his lecture notes because some parts of the book are wrong and he focuses on different sections more heavily than others, but the book is definitely helpful in providing needed mechanisms. Overall, this was such a hard class just because of the nature of the material, but Prof. Chruma was always willing to help. If you had questions about what was said in lecture, he is willing to answer them after class or in office hours. The tests were extremely challenging, but he also added any extra credit (which for use was up to 6%) after the curve, so that boosted up a lot of grades. I would highly recommend keeping a running list of reagents and what they can do because they will keep popping up in new chapters and exams (I didn't do this but it definitely would have helped) and there are a lot to try to keep track of by flipping back and forth in your notes.

Prof Chruma is a great instructor and he clearly knows what he is talking about. Pretty much everything conceptual you need to know he explains during lecture so reading the textbook chapters isn't really necessary except for studying reagents and some mechanisms, but go for it if you have the time I'm sure it helps. During lectures, he writes down all the reactions and mechanisms you need to know for exams so basically just copy what he writes. He also adds nice little tidbits of history and lab application to some reactions so that's cool if you're really into chem. Now the exams...they're hard. From what I've heard, Chruma's exams are the most difficult out of all the other orgo professors, but he also does test corrections (like most of the other professors) for 50% back on anything you missed on exams. I highly recommend looking at the integrated problems for each chapter since he likes to pull stuff from there sometimes for exams. Also, try to do well on your first exam since its gonna be the easiest one and will give you a good buffer for the other exams. So overall, Prof Chruma is a pretty good instructor and a really nice guy. If you get a 60% average on exams before corrections, you should be able to pull off a high B or low A.